We have been painting jelly beans in a silver nut dish in class the last few weeks. Let me take you through the process. First the reference photo, this will be fun to paint, all those colors and reflective surfaces. It looks difficult right now but when it is finished my students will be proud of all their hard work.

We began by painting the jelly beans first, which is always the most fun. I painted each bean with a light local color wash .

After studying the reference photo I decided I didn’t like the two red jelly beans at the top of the pile directly in front of the spoon, they were too dark and did not allow for a center of interest. Using some Daniel Smith watercolor ground I covered the red and pink jelly beans and finished painting the remaining beans before deciding what color I wanted to use.

In the meantime I started putting down some of the colors in the spoon. Attempting to follow the intricacies of the reflective colors in the spoon was a bit daunting so I blew up the photo and numbered the flutes on the spoon. I also used a square of paper with a ‘peep hole’ cut out in the middle to use as a guide.

When unsure of what color I want to use in a painting I will often print off several photos of the painting in progress and use colored pencils to experiment with various colors. Sometimes if I’m really feeling adventurous I’ll use photoshop, however that usually ends in total frustration! Colored pencils are way easier 🙂

I decided to paint the white bean in the front purple, a compliment to the neighboring orange bean, and then the two remaining beans will be white which will draw the viewers eye to the spoon. However, white is never just white, there will be various colors from neighboring beans reflected in the white.

I am now in the process of painting the silver nut dish, working my way around. I am using a mix of Alizarin Crimson, Jenkins Green and Indigo for the silver grey in the bowl.